


Different

by EverybodyLovesEggsy



Series: To Be Continued...? [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bullying, Creature Harry Potter, May Continue Story Later, One Shot, Pre-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:53:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29179797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverybodyLovesEggsy/pseuds/EverybodyLovesEggsy
Summary: What if Harry was born unexplainably a little different and nobody in the wizarding world knew about it besides James and Lily before they die?Will continue story, when inspiration strikes, but for now, enjoy my oneshot :)
Series: To Be Continued...? [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988845
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	Different

Harry James Potter was born in the very last minutes of July 31st, 1980. He had all ten fingers and toes and a healthy set of lungs that loudly announced him to the world. By all accounts, Harry was born a perfectly normal, healthy wizarding child. Except for one thing.

“James, I don’t recognize what creature that they could come from. Do you?”

The new father shook his head as he scrutinized his son, “No, and I don’t know where he would have inherited it from if I did. We know there are no creatures in your family, and there hasn’t been a creature in my family for at least a century.”

Lily hummed in thought as she continued to look at her little boy. The baby snoozed on obliviously to his parent’s conversation, shifting slightly in his mother’s arms. The red head smiled lovingly at her son before looking up at her husband.

“Well it doesn’t matter anyways. He’s perfect.”

“Yes, he is,” James smiled back in agreement, reaching a hand over to lightly stroke his son’s head, including the unexpectedly shaped ears.

Because rather than the roundness of a human’s ears, Harry’s ears were pointed at the tips and curved upward slightly.

While others (both muggle and wizard) might have balked at the obvious creature inheritance of some sort, with magical beings such as Goblins and House-Elves, Lily and James found it easy to accept their son’s uniqueness. Neither of the new parents held any prejudices against creatures (especially considering they were best friends with one) and were one of the few wizarding families who advocated for creature rights. As they realized, however, the creature inheritance was unexplainable – both in origin of creature it was received from, and how Harry inherited them in the first place. So, the Potters did all the research they could in order to search for an explanation. They confirmed that Harry’s ears were not big and droopy like House-Elves, or long and straightly pointed like a Goblin’s, nor did they look like the hybrid ears of Lily and James’s former charms professor and half-Goblin, Filius Flitwick. The closest creature they found with similar ears would be a Fairy, though according to pictures in books, their ears did not curve upwards like Harry’s. Their research into how Harry received the inheritance was just as unfruitful.

While they did their research, Harry was raised as he would have been had he not had unique ears. This included taking in stride the quirks of Harry seeming to be able to hear things he shouldn’t be able to (like when James cursed after accidentally cutting himself, causing Harry – who was on the other side of the house – to startle in his mother’s arms and cry in distress until he saw James was okay) and crying in pain when things were too loud. The only thing that was different for little Harry was the glamour that Lily and James applied to him whenever others were to be around. The Potters knew that even though they and a few others would be accepting of their son’s unexplained uniqueness, they feared he would be looked down on worse than known wizards with creature blood, simply because everything about Harry’s inheritance was unexplained. Therefore, they kept Harry’s oddity a secret and when anyone – even Harry’s godfather and honorary godfather – was around, they charmed his ears to appear the normal round shape of humans. Concealing the truth was made especially easy when, just a few days after Harry was born, the Potters went into hiding due to Voldemort targeting them because of a prophecy. Both knew they couldn’t hide Harry’s uniqueness forever (nor did they want to teach Harry to be ashamed of himself), however, they hoped they could conceal it at least until they had some explanations to the inheritance.

It was because of their efforts to wait to reveal Harry’s oddity that on Halloween in 1981, only three months after Harry’s first birthday, Harry’s ears were glamoured for the little family’s excursion outdoors trick-or-treating. They returned to the house after only half an hour due to Harry’s ears becoming irritated from the loudness of children on Halloween night. Both parents were trying to distract their son from the pain in his ears (if his rubbing at them while he quietly cried was anything to go by), when they were surprised by the entrance of Voldemort into their home.

In the chaos that ensued, nobody – not Lily, James, or even Voldemort – realized that little Harry still had the glamour on his ears. So, when Severus Snape found a crying Harry and Lily’s body, he saw nothing unusual about Harry before disapparting away when he heard the frantic stomping footsteps of Hagrid and Sirius coming up the stairs. The two similarly saw nothing out of the ordinary about Harry before Sirius left to track down the traitor, Peter Pettigrew, and Hagrid to take the little boy to Albus Dumbledore. And just like those before them, Dumbledore and his unexpected companion, Minerva McGonagall, never noticed the glamour before placing Harry on the doorstep of Number 4, Privet Drive. It wasn’t until less than an hour before Petunia Dursley was to find her nephew sleeping on her doorstep with a note did the final remnants of James’s magic finally wore off, revealing the pointed tips of Harry’s ears.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Vernon and Petunia Dursley were obsessed with normalcy. It’s the reason they moved to Little Whining, Surrey, just after getting married. Everything there was perfectly normal, therefore, since they were normal, it was the perfect place for them to live. That, of course, changed when, on a particularly abnormal morning, Petunia found a baby on their porch, right next to the milk. Not wanting to be seen with something so strange happening to her, Petunia quickly picked up both basket and milk and went inside, frantically calling for Vernon to come downstairs. As she heard her husband lumbering downstairs, she noticed a letter sitting in the basket with the sleeping babe. She quickly grabbed it and tore it open, hoping it would prove that this was some mistake – her perfectly normal family couldn’t possibly have been meant to be the ones to receive a baby that was not theirs.

Unfortunately for Petunia, she quickly realized that there had not been a mistake. No, instead her normal life and family had been disrupted by her sister’s freak because she and her freaky husband got themselves blown up. Petunia had to hold back a screech, else she would wake both her perfect little boy and her sister’s boy – not that she cared for the freak, but she hardly wanted to have to deal with him when he was awake and likely to do the freaky things her sister had done as a child.

When her husband joined her in the dining room, she explained what happened and handed the letter to her husband. As he read the letter, Petunia looked down at the boy in disgust. As soon as she did, Petunia was unable to hold back her shriek any longer, causing the boy in the basket to startle awake and cry. It was worse than she thought! Not only was her perfectly normal family saddled with a freak, but a _deformed_ freak! It was a disgrace! If not for the subtle but clear threats in the letter, she would immediately insist the boy was taken away!

Next to her, Vernon Dursley grew red in anger when he realized why his wife had shrieked. How dare those freaks demand that they take in this boy, who _flaunted_ his freakiness with those ears of his! But like his wife, he quickly realized that they had no choice but to keep the boy, as much as they both hated it, else the freaks come bother them more. Not wanting to even look at the source of their problem, while his wife moved upstairs to soothe their son whom they could hear crying upstairs, Vernon angrily stalked to the cupboard under the stairs, removed most of the things inside. He then retrieved the boy and stuffed him inside. The sobs coming from the freak were easily muffled as soon as he closed the door. This was just the first of many instances that Vernon and Petunia Dursley treated their nephew in their appallingly abnormal way.

It was this environment that poor little Harry was left to. He grew up nearly always locked in his cupboard, only ever getting Dudley’s old things and just enough food to keep him alive. For the following three (almost four) years, the Dursleys refused to allow the boy to go outside where anyone could see him, claiming that the boy was just too sick when those that had seen glimpses of him asked.

After Harry’s second birthday, when he was just large enough to fit in a cap that would last through his growth for years to come (meaning it slid over Harry’s eyes constantly for the first few years), Petunia went out and bought the cheapest little grey beanie she could find – it was the only thing they ever bought for him. Harry was forced to wear it at all times despite the fact that he was never let out. They made sure that both Dudley and Harry learned that the beanie was never, _ever_ to be taken off where someone might see – it was the only rule that both Petunia and Vernon never let their son break. When both boys were five and sent off to primary (though they sent Harry reluctantly), the rule was completely ingrained and an excuse was made to the teachers, allowing Harry to hide his ears from anyone.

When Harry went off to school with Dudley for the first time, he understood that he only ever got the beanie to hide his freakish ears, but Harry didn’t care. He had something entirely of his own, and if he needed to look different to have that then Harry was alright with that.

He continued to think so, despite his relatives telling him how wrong it was to be a freak, when his hearing improved. At first it was just hearing something through a door without having to place his ear up against it. It was never that clear (unless he _did_ press against the closed door), just muffled sounds of talking or something dropping. But eventually, as his hearing continued to improve, he could hear what was being spoken through even the walls. Then, when people were farther away, he could hear what they said when others couldn’t. The Dursley’s immediately noticed, leading to Harry earning beatings for eavesdropping, despite his never meaning to. Harry quickly learned to pretend he couldn’t hear certain things due to walls or shut doors, or even distance – which he learned from watching how far apart the kids at school could hear one another. Sometimes he was still punished for eavesdropping when he made a mistake, but it did make the amount of them drop.

However, as much as he pretended not to hear things, Harry never ignored everything he heard. He listened to his Aunt Petunia complain to his Uncle Vernon while he was still doing chores outside at the end of the day when something bad happened and so was never caught off guard when his uncle decided to punish him. He heard the teacher he told the truth about his bruises to talk to the Dursleys in the other room, and instantly knew he was in more trouble than he ever had been. It wasn’t until after he turned six, however, when Harry was listening to his Uncle brag to the businesspeople brought home, he heard a weird thumping sound pick up speed. When he focused, he could vaguely hear the thumping sound coming from multiple different places. Not understanding what it was or why one of them had picked up for a moment, Harry didn’t pay much attention to it besides noting all the times the thumping changed speed, such as when it when Uncle Vernon was angry, or Dudley lied to his parents. It wasn’t until his teacher began teaching about the heart that he wondered if he was hearing people’s heartbeats. Deciding that had to be it, Harry listened to the thumping just as much as he did to all of the other things he wasn’t supposed to because he knew that his ears couldn’t too bad if they helped know when Dudley was about to find him while he was hiding, or when he needed to be prepared for Uncle Vernon’s punishment.

Until the day his beanie fell off in public.

It was just a few days after he turned seven when Dudley and his gang had once again caught him during a game of Harry Hunting. They knocked him down and began kicking him like they always did. That was when the beanie accidentally slipped off. Suddenly the other boys stopped, their heartbeats changing from the rhythm that Harry recognized as exercise, to what he thought was fear. He peaked through his arms and saw they were all staring. Harry finally realized the beanie was gone and he had never felt more freakish than in that moment, especially when, after a long moment of silent shock passed, they joined Dudley in calling him a freak as they continued to pummel him, not a single heartbeat indicating a lie.

That was the first time Harry truly began to be ashamed to be a freak. And over the following four years, the little boy continued to feel that more each day.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes about the ears:  
> I imagine the Goblins' ears to look like they do in the movies, and Professor Flitwicks to be very similar but not quite the same due to being a half-breed. Below is how I see Fairy Ears:  
> https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=oC9ClFQQ&id=ABAD8F10E4A6B2BFC46A84E00CDD0E9A2F7AC22C&thid=OIP.oC9ClFQQjOl3JlHKs6za8QAAAA&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fvignette.wikia.nocookie.net%2fharrypotter%2fimages%2f4%2f43%2fFairy.png%2frevision%2flatest%2fscale-to-width-down%2f350%3fcb%3d20161129180101&exph=350&expw=350&q=harry+potter+fairy&simid=608025013072235563&ck=77384633BCD13740CE8AC3E1A61B36E0&selectedIndex=0&FORM=IRPRST&ajaxhist=0
> 
> And finally, this is how I imagine Harry's ears to look, which is clearly similar to the Fairy ears, but still different:  
> https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=CCoJb0id&id=CF5C3C2D4474CE9BF5646867A5402ECC316E944D&thid=OIP.CCoJb0idX36SITntuWwqbAHaFI&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR082a096f489d5f7e922139edb96c2a6c%3frik%3dTZRuMcwuQKVnaA%26riu%3dhttp%253a%252f%252fcdn.collider.com%252fwp-content%252fuploads%252f2016%252f03%252fthe-shannara-chronicles-bandon.jpg%26ehk%3ddbvQzBwN24ggab%252f4ZBto7yMG6ZyiTMc6RRyJS1n0fYc%253d%26risl%3d%26pid%3dImgRaw&exph=692&expw=1000&q=shannara+chronicles+bandon+ears&simid=608024282909574783&ck=DB2DFE59E1ED26C7015749902EF9C0DB&selectedIndex=4&FORM=IRPRST&ajaxhist=0
> 
> Hope you guys liked it! I already know what direction I am going to take with this one when I eventually write more for it, so this one will probably be updated sooner than others (though still delayed due to other stories I'm working on). However, I would love for some feedback or ideas! Can't wait to hear from you guys!


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